February, 2019

VANCOUVER – The City of Burnbay said in a press release that they have filed a civil claim against Kinder Morgan in Supreme Court.

On Sept. 2, the city said workers from Kinder Morgan entered a conservation area on Burnaby Mountain and cut down trees and bushes. The city said the company ignored a order to cease bylaw contraventions, which prohibits cutting trees and damaging the park.

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So now Burnaby will go to court on Sept. 11 to seek a temporary injunction to stop further works damaging the park until the matter can be heard before the court.

A few weeks ago the National Energy Board (NEB) ruled that Kinder Morgan can proceed with necessary studies of its preferred pipeline route through the mountain without the city’s consent.

“There is no requirement … for companies to reach agreement with landowners, the Crown, or otherwise, before exercising the right to access land,” the board stated.

The City of Burnaby will also be seeking a declaration that the NEB ruling does not have constitutional jurisdiction to issue an order to the city that directs or limits its bylaws.

“In spite of Burnaby’s longstanding bylaws put in place to fulfill our citizens’ wishes to protect irreplaceable conservation areas in our city, on September 3 Kinder Morgan cut down 13 ecologically significant trees – the largest of which was 24 metres high – in the Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area,” said Mayor Derek Corrigan in a press release. “These trees cannot be replaced.”

“Kinder Morgan was not entitled to carry out this destructive action, and the fact that they have now stopped their work and have gone back to the National Energy Board to seek an order that would allow them to continue to conduct destructive survey work in the park – including cutting of large trees in forested areas, drilling of bore holes, and constructing a helicopter staging area – demonstrates that they knew they did not have the lawful right to do what they did.”

Corrigan said the city will do everything it can to ensure Kinder Morgan does not return.

“We do not believe that the National Energy Board’s ruling enables Kinder Morgan to defy our laws and we are asking the Supreme Court to confirm this,” he added.

WATCH: President Obama will lay out his plan to deal with Islamic State militants to congressional leaders today, before delivering it to Americans in prime-time on Wednesday

U.S. President Barack Obama will deliver a prime-time address to the nation Wednesday to discuss his plans for expanding U.S. efforts to confront militants in Iraq and Syria.

The White House says Obama will speak from the State Floor at 9 p.m. EDT. The White House says he will discuss the threat posed by the Islamic State militants and a strategy for “degrading and ultimately destroying” the group.

Ahead of his address, Obama is meeting with congressional leaders at the White House Tuesday. Officials have said the president is seeking “buy-in” from lawmakers but they have not specified whether Obama will seek an authorization for use of force.

The U.S. is already launching airstrikes against militants in Iraq, actions taken at the invitation of the Iraqi government and without congressional authorization.

Janay Rice, the wife of former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, spoke out for the first time after video was released showing him violently punching her.

In an emotional post via her Instagram account she defended her husband and criticized the media attention surrounding the story.

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“I woke up this morning feeling like I had a horrible nightmare, feeling like I’m mourning the death of my closest friend,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “But to have to accept the fact that it’s reality is a nightmare itself. No one knows the pain that the media & unwanted [opinions] from the public has caused my family. To make us relive a moment in our lives that we regret everyday is a horrible thing.

“To take something away from the man I love that he has worked his ass off for all his life just to gain ratings is horrific. THIS IS OUR LIFE! What don’t you all get. If your intentions were to hurt us, embarrass us, make us feel alone, take all happiness away, you’ve succeeded on so many levels. Just know we will continue to grow & show the world what real love is! Ravensnation we love you!”

The message came one day after TMZ posted disturbing video showing Rice punching Janay, who was then his fiancée, in an elevator at an Atlantic City hotel last February.

The Associated Press reported it had viewed a higher-quality and slightly longer version of the video which shows Rice and his wife shouting obscenities at each other before he delivers a knockout punch. He then drags her unconscious body out of the elevator where he is met by hotel staff. One of them can be heard saying “she’s drunk, right?” followed by “no cops.”

WATCH: What the Ray Rice controversy could mean for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell

The NFL originally said it hadn’t seen the latest video, and denied a report from TMZ that no one connected to the league had asked the hotel in Atlantic City for video from inside the elevator.

A statement from the NFL issued Tuesday said:

“Security for Atlantic City casinos is handled by the New Jersey State Police. Any videos related to an ongoing criminal investigation are held in the custody of the state police. As we said yesterday: We requested from law enforcement any and all information about the incident, including the video from inside the elevator. That video was not made available to us.”

Many of us were saddened by the recent news of Robin Williams’ death due to suicide after a long, debilitating struggle with severe depression. The media frenzy over his death has refocused wider public attention on the often neglected and taboo topic of suicide. Wednesday is World Suicide Prevention Day and at 6:45 we’ll talk with the Vice President of the Canadian Suicide Prevention Association about some of the support groups that are available to help.

Our closer look at the Gottingen250 celebration continues with 2 members of Universal Soul. The legendary hip-hop group is getting back together to take the stage at the big concert this Saturday night. At 7:15 we’ll sit down with Finley Tolliver and Tracey Williams to talk Gottingen Street memories.

745 See what’s new and next – by supporting some of Halifax’s hottest local designers at the Design and Artistry Showcase at Sunnyside mall this weekend. Fashion guru Lindsay Stockall hosts a mini fashion show. @SunnysideMall

815 Dr. Howard Conter chats with us about infectious diseases. There’s a mystery illness spreading among young people in the US – and there are concerns it could spread to Canada.

At 8:45 we’ll continue our look at The Atlantic Film Festival with the filmmakers behind the short film Lord Of Chaos. The film deals with the effects of Post Traumatic Stress disorder told through a retired military medic struggling to find his voice among the chaos plaguing his mind. At 8:45 we’ll meet the Lead Actor and Director of the movie.

TORONTO – The new Sloan record, Commonwealth, distinguishes itself in many ways: it’s a double album, the second-longest of the band’s career; it’s divided into four sides, each a solo showcase for one of the quartet’s creative engines; and the final song is 18 minutes long, an Andrew Scott-penned marathon of superglued song sketches.

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And despite all that, the new Sloan record essentially sounds quite a bit like a Sloan record.

Of course, that can be said of pretty much everything in their catalogue since their adolescent (if audacious) debut recordings Peppermint and Smeared came out in 1992.

Little that they’ve done since 1994’s Twice Removed has sounded much like what was going on in rock music, but it’s all sounded of a piece: sure-footed, polished power pop.

“From our second record on, it’s like, what year is that, 1981? Or 1965? Or 2008?” pointed out Chris Murphy recently, surrounded at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel by his bandmates Scott, Jay Ferguson and Patrick Pentland.

“A lot of the songs — I don’t know about all of them — could be on any of the records. It’s fairly interchangeable. Except for a deliberate attempt to make a streamlined record on our 2003 record, ‘Action Pact,’ it’s been pretty much just an eclectic, whatever you’ve got at the time (process). I could probably take all the songs that we have, which is 200 of them, and I could probably create albums out of it with different sounds or something.”

Here, Pentland interjects from a nearby couch.

“It’s odd, because … in a weird way, you’re kind of comparing us to AC/DC or something, where every record sounds the same. And you’re probably right,” said Pentland, clad in a Jesus and Mary Chain shirt.

“But it’s four AC/DCs because we’re all doing our own sound throughout it.

“None of us have really changed our sound that much, I guess.”

The process hasn’t changed much, either. Even as Commonwealth boasts its “four solo records” conceit — which indeed winks at Kiss and their ill-fated series of solitary ego workouts — Murphy stresses that the only real difference was the track sequencing. The four members worked largely in isolation on writing their songs, but that’s what they’ve always done.

In a way, the segregated nature of their contributions sort of goes against the band’s defining narrative of democracy and unity, one that sees them evenly splitting both the mike and the money.

But it’s the way they’ve worked since the second record, and any deviations from the formula were flitting and even infamous.

“When we recorded our album Action Pact,” began Murphy, again taking aim at the 2003 record, one of only two in the band’s discography that failed to chart in Canada, “we had a producer (Tom Rothrock), which we usually don’t have. And he was really into this idea of us recording everything together. So we’d come in, he’s a real ‘vibe’ guy — like a surfer basically — put on a click, weird beat, and be like: ‘Just play something. Now you play something. All right, YOU play something.’

“And it was just,” he pauses, “garbage.”

Considering that the band has always essentially been composed of four solo artists, their cohesion and consistency is surprising. Pentland attributes that in part to the fact that, individually, their tastes have been more or less unchanging since the band’s beginning.

On the other hand, Murphy says he’s been actively working to make timeless-sounding records since their distortion-contorted debut Smeared.

“I think that I spent some time being so mortified by our first album being so of the time, slash, behind the time that I was hell-bent on not feeling that way again.

“I don’t hate our first record anymore. I never really hated it. It (was just) so ’88, but we were doing it in ’91.”

Although their next record, 1994’s dramatically more mature and now-beloved Twice Removed, first laid down the blueprint for their sound — cheerfully lit power pop tinged with jangly psychedelia — they still hadn’t completely committed to the one-for-all thing.

“Patrick was probably trying to make songs within the confines (that) we were allowing him on that record,” Murphy pointed out. “He used to refer to Jay and me as the ‘alt gestapo.’”

“When we made that record, I thought: ‘What the (hell) are you doing? We made this record, it got us on a major label, and now you’re making a completely different record?’” Pentland recalled.

Finally with 1996’s One Chord to Another, the band achieved egoless equality. Pentland even gave the band its first two Top 10 singles in “The Good in Everyone” and “Everything You’ve Done Wrong” (their third, and to this point final, Top 10 hit was 1998’s “Money City Maniacs,” also a Pentland composition).

Each member of the band agrees that Sloan wouldn’t have lasted if it couldn’t constitute a creative outlet for all four players. They’re the first to drop the “democracy” term, by the way, although Murphy wants to clarify exactly what that means.

“We’re not a democracy where (we say), ‘What do you guys think of this song?’ and then we all vote or something. It’s not like that. It’s like: ‘OK, we’re all in this. We’re all going to give ourselves. Everybody’s going to get songs, and you can do them however you want.’”

And how are disagreements handled?

“If you don’t agree with someone, but the other guys do, you just have to step away and trust that they’re making the right decision,” Pentland replied.

“Or wait and say I told you so.”

Sloan’s last full-length, 2011’s lush and punchy The Double Cross, was critically celebrated by critics in the U.S. and did better there than some of their past records.

Still, Murphy points out, “we haven’t had a pay increase in 10 years.” The band seems utterly bored by discussion of sales or broadening their audience.

“It’s hard to compete with the nostalgia people have for the songs that came out in university or whenever they were in love with life or whatever,” said Murphy. “I think the music that we’re making is just as good, but it would be naive to think it’s going to have the same kind of effect on people.

“We’ll reach some young people, but it’s mostly people who have been following us all along, and our music has already changed their world in a way our latest record won’t.”

It was in part the disappointment surrounding the much-battered Action Pact — an album fuelled by a major investment from the label, Pentland says — that crystallized a way forward, one where Sloan would double down on its Sloanness and worry less about fitting in.

“A lot of pressure came off us,” remembered Pentland. “After a while, it was just like, this isn’t going to happen. We’re not going to be superstars. So let’s just focus on being us. We don’t care about being on Letterman anymore.”